Monthly Archives: November 2007

Computer Science vs. Business Information Technology

Posted on by

Many years ago, when I decided to go to Virginia Tech, I had to pick a major. After narrowing the choices down to Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CPE), and Business Information Technology (BIT), I chose CPE and CS. The funny thing is, all I do is web development, which is mainly taught in BIT courses. This caused me to start thinking, should I have been a BIT major?

What I began to realize is that both CS and BIT have their own strengths and weaknesses.

CS majors leave college with a great programming background. During college, I implemented dozens of applications. I left college with a great understanding of design patterns, data structures, and much more. At the same time, I received no web development experience.

BIT majors on the other hand, don’t get as much programming experience but they do get more real world, web application experience in addition to their project management experience. In the past few weeks, I have interviewed numerous BIT majors that have implemented data driven websites as class projects. Unfortunately, their programming skills seemed lacking when compared to most CS majors.

To me, it makes sense that BIT majors have more project management experience and less coding experience. What doesn’t make sense is why CS majors don’t focus more on web development. I think colleges need to start recognizing the importance of preparing CS majors for the real world, which now revolves around web applications.

First impression of Seattle

Posted on by

I have been in Seattle for about 72 hours now, and ironically enough am sitting in a coffee shop right now. This is my first time in Seattle, or even on the West coast for that matter.

The first day was spent in downtown Seattle. As expected, the food was amazing. On every corner was a different restaurant I hadn’t heard of (except I later realized one of the restaurants was a franchise, which means I need to get out more). One of the biggest stand outs of the area is the modern furnishings everywhere. Everything is brightly colored, curved and off center reminding me of an Ikea catalog. I haven’t seen as much of the city as I want to, so hopefully I will get back over there this week.

Right now, I am about 15 miles outside the city in Bellevue, which reminds me much more of Virginia than I ever thought it would. It is set off Lake Washington in rolling hills. It also helps that it is typical suburbia, so I have been to about 90% of the franchise restaurants and shops. I look forward to seeing more of the area this week.